Rivals focus on ECAC

Mayor's Cup done, Union, RPI return to league play

By Sean Martin

Published 11:45 pm, Thursday, January 31, 2013

TROY — In the aftermath of Union's thrilling 3-2 win over RPI in the inaugural Mayor's Cup game last Saturday at Times Union Center, both the Dutchmen and the Engineers immediately set their sights on their upcoming ECAC hockey schedule.

For RPI, the loss to Union — the winning goal was scored in the game's final minute — halted the momentum gained from a home sweep of Colgate and Cornell the week before.

Despite feeling as if they let a game get away from them against Union, Engineers coach Seth Appert likes the way his team has reacted to the loss.

"At the end of the day, we didn't make a play at the end of the game and they did," Appert said.

"Our guys were ticked off because they know we did a lot of good things and that we made a mistake in execution at a real key moment.

"Our focus is now on this week of practice and hopefully we have a bit of anger and nastiness to us because of the way we lost Saturday."

More Information

Weekend schedules

RPI

Friday: vs. Harvard, 7 p.m., 91.5 FM

Saturday: vs. Dartmouth, 7 p.m.

Union

Friday: vs. Dartmouth, 7:30 p.m., NBCSN

Since the calendar flipped to 2013, RPI has battled hard before losing road games at nationally ranked Boston University (in overtime) and third-ranked New Hampshire before playing No. 2 Quinnipiac to a tie on the road, the only blemish for the unbeaten Bobcats in ECAC play.

Appert is hoping the effort given during the tough losses translates into late-season wins as the 11th-place Engineers gear up for the stretch run of the regular season in an effort to improve its playoff seeding in the 12-team ECAC.

"We wanted to be a team that was playing our best hockey come February and March," Appert said. "Losses are losses but I think there is a difference between a well -played loss and a poorly played loss."

While RPI is preparing for a set of games this weekend, No. 18 Union plays host to Dartmouth Friday at Messa Rink in a nationally televised game (NBC Sports Network) in its only game of the weekend.

Union is tied with Dartmouth for third place in the conference standings and was beaten by the Big Green 3-2 in Hanover, N.H., in November and won't be fazed by playing in front of a national TV audience.

"This team has played in front of some pretty big audiences but we have to look at it as they beat us last time," Union coach Rick Bennett said.

"Our focus is on Dartmouth, not being on TV."

Given the additional media attention on this game, junior goaltender Troy Grosenick says its just business as usual for the Dutchmen.

"All the fans are real excited about it, we're just treating it like another league game," Grosenick said. "We're trying to come out of it with two points. That is how we approach them all."

Sean Martin, a local freelance writer, is a frequent contributor to the Times Union.